Number of active churches in the Russian Empire/USSR/post-Soviet space from 1900 to 2000 via the blogger genby. One element of Stalinist propaganda is that he presided over the rebirth of the Russian church. However, one graph is worth thousands of words, and we can immediately see that there was no such thing - there were... Read More

I meant to write about this PEW poll when it came out this May. Better late than never, I guess. They highlight what they consider "9 key findings" here. Here is what I found to be the most interesting, significant, and/or surprising: This doubles as a rough demographic tally. Russia is around 10% Muslim -... Read More

The second part of my series comparing Russia, Britain, and the US focuses on the people themselves. What are their strengths and foibles? How do they vary by class, region, race, and religion? How do they view each other and other countries and peoples? What do they eat, drink, and watch? Where do they travel... Read More

I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.

One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.

Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.